


pulse

by stupidqpid



Series: moon over bourbon street [7]
Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M, can that one scene be considered body horror?, nothing graphic though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25320490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stupidqpid/pseuds/stupidqpid
Summary: Wooyoung wakes up in someone's bed.Or: Thebat is out of the bag.
Relationships: Jung Wooyoung/Song Mingi
Series: moon over bourbon street [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1659388
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33





	pulse

Wooyoung wakes up in bed. Groggily, he sits up and looks around the dark room, but something seems off: the configuration is vaguely like his own bedroom, but other than that he doesn’t spot anything familiar.

Almost as an afterthought, Wooyoung’s ears pick up on a hushed voice speaking frantically in another room, possibly on the phone since he doesn’t hear anything in return. Gingerly, he gets up and carefully opens the door, spying from the crack before daring to step outside.

The voice sounds more and more worried, with a painfully heartbroken undertone to those words. Still in quite the stupor from waking up with no recollection of what happened that led him to find himself in someone else’s bed, it takes Wooyoung way too long to gather his bearing and recognize the voice as Mingi’s, whom he can now see pacing back and forth between the dimly lit kitchenette and the couch, a hand holding his phone to his ear and the other running vigorously through his already messy hair.

_ “--screwed. Even if-- N-no, I don’t think it’s necessary, I-- He won’t trust me ever again, and has all the rights--” _

Wooyoung rubs his eyes in an effort to wake up fully and make sense of the jumbled one-sided conversation he just heard. He pads quietly to the end of the hallway, waiting for Mingi to notice him; he can’t help but startle when the tall neighbor suddenly whips his head in his direction, eyes wide as saucers as if he just saw a ghost. Wooyoung’s heart falls to the pit of his stomach when Mingi takes a step back and unconsciously tightens his grip on the phone, followed by an alarming noise of glass and plastic cracking slightly.

“Wooyoung! H-how are you feeling…?” Mingi asks while surreptitiously letting go of the phone and reaching for the switch, turning all the lights on. He cringes at his own awkwardness: not even their chaotic first meeting felt this uncomfortable.

The guest replies with a shrug. “‘m fine, just surprised I woke up in your bed...” 

Warmth spreads across Wooyoung’s cheeks as he trails off. He mentally smacks himself upside the head for wishing something  _ did  _ happen and regretting not remembering it, but since he’s still fully dressed and without aches anywhere, getting intimate with his crush can be excluded.

Mingi catches on the skipped beat and the flowing of blood to Wooyoung’s face and groin. He hastily shakes his head and hands. “Oh no no no, we didn’t do anything. I just brought you to my place after you fainted… You really don’t remember?”

A hint of relief and a shadow of fear mix with the mild shock on Mingi’s face. Wooyoung doesn’t know what to make of it. He’s more alarmed by the fact he fainted, apparently.

“I fainted?! What happened?”

Mingi looks away, eyes downcast. A few seconds of reflection and possibly of pep-talk later, he gestures at the chairs in the kitchen. “Take a seat.”

As they both sit down, the host’s determination to keep the whole table between them doesn’t go unnoticed by Wooyoung. Bile starts rising in his gut, the worry that something terrible occurred and the frustration for not knowing exactly  _ what  _ becoming less and less bearable.

After a long exhale, Mingi asks, “You were probably too drowsy from your nap in the theater, but do you remember anything from the way back home?”

Wooyoung leans back with a frown and arms crossed, deep in thought while raking his brain: they left the cinema; they walked past brightly lit shops still open that late; they hesitated in front of a bingsu place; they took a couple of back alleys. He glances at Mingi and tells him as much.

“What about the guy in the cap?”

Wooyoung frowns. “What guy--”

_ “--Give me your wallets and phones, quick.” _

_ “--please put the knife down.” _

_ A scream. A grunt. A knife in Mingi’s guts. The thief scrambling to get the fuck away. Blood. _

_ Glowing eyes and black scleras. Fangs. _

With a gasp, Wooyoung stares at Mingi. For his part, Mingi isn’t even looking at Wooyoung anymore, rather keeping his face tilted down with his eyes closed and mindlessly wringing his hands on the table.

“Shit, what are you still doing here?? Did you already go to the hospital? How long was I out for?”

Mingi blinks, not sure he heard correctly. Hesitantly, he looks up, coming face to face with the human’s earnest -if not panicky- eyes: it astounds Mingi how the worry for his well being following the attack wins over Wooyoung’s self preservation despite what he just witnessed. 

But does Wooyoung really remember? How can the vampire be sure the other isn’t suffering from amnesia, with his mind blocking the most shocking events and details of the past hour or so? Should Mingi take advantage of it and pretend it was some trick of the light that morphed his eyes, if asked, or should he still go through with his intention of revealing his true nature to keep too many lies from piling up?

“Thank goodness your eye isn’t black anymore, but what about your wound?”

Well, that answers it. Fuck. Wooyoung’s naive observations and straightforwardness are going to kill the vampire for real one of these days. Here goes nothing.

“I...I just slapped a bandage on it, it was just a scratch…”

“Don’t go all Monty Python on me, there was too much blood for ‘just a scratch’,” Wooyoung rebuts, crossing his arms on the table; he slowly taps a finger on the surface as they sit in silence, sneaking glances when they think the other isn’t looking. While on one side we have Mingi trying to muster the courage to finally spill the beans, on the other Wooyoung is trying to make sense of the barrage of hypotheses that are flooding his head, one more impossible than the other.

There’s no way he saw Mingi sporting demonic eyes and sharp teeth, is there?

“Listen, Wooyoung--”

“Mingi, are you perhaps--”

Of course they would talk at the same time, interrupting each other right when they decided to bite the bullet and  _ say something _ .

“Uhm, you first.” Wooyoung meekly gestures at Mingi to continue.

Days upon weeks of even worse struggles at a semblance of normalcy than usual have come to a head. Is the vampire ready for the big reveal? It’s more like his hand has been forced, to be perfectly honest, but it’s a long time coming and maybe it won’t be that bad…Right?

Mingi drops an arm on the table with a loud thud and runs a hand through his hair in distress, startling Wooyoung. “I...have a favor to ask of you,” he states, not quite able to look the human in the eye. “Please stay calm whatever I say or do and whatever you see.”

Wooyoung bites down words of concern and schools his face into an expression of neutral interest. He nods. His heartbeat accelerates.

Mingi gulps and takes a long intake of breath he doesn’t need before nodding too, more at himself than at Wooyoung. Keeping his head lowered and giving a prolonged loud exhale, he prepares to show his other face.

“I really wish there were better circumstances to tell you this but you have the right to know,” he starts, voice getting even deeper than usual with each word. “What you saw in the alley...Wooyoung, I am a vampire.”

Mingi slowly looks up. He went all out, not really knowing the reason himself: if on one hand going “full monster” will most likely make Wooyoung run away screaming, on the other they’ll both know how much on board is the human willing to be to give this unlikely relationship a shot.

(He can’t even say unprecedented because of a certain couple of friends.)

In addition to what Mingi accidentally showed during their encounter with the thief, his cheekbones are now sharper and higher, his jawline more defined, and his ears thinner and pointier with faint ridges on the cartilage; velvety black spreads from the tip of his longer nails to about halfways his bonier yet stronger fingers, fading into the rest of his wan hands. He slightly parts his lips, allowing his canines to lengthen and sharpen in front of the human’s blanching face and widening eyes. Mingi might not have use for the theatrics on a day to day basis, but that’s his full appearance if he ever has to fight for survival, a residual of the vampires’ evolution.

Wooyoung’s heart seems to stop for a worryingly long moment before picking up much faster than before. He suddenly feels conscious of his bare neck, absentmindedly slapping a clammy hand to the spot where he can feel his pulse beating erratically, as well as the nervous gulp he takes to soothe his dry throat. Wooyoung takes in all the transformations Mingi just went through with a weird mixture of morbid fascination and a more primitive fight-or-flight urge, only to go back to stare at those mesmerizing rose gold eyes swimming in ink. He doesn’t know how much of his inability to look away is caused by his own curiosity, not to mention the attraction for the person underneath all  _ that _ , or rather the compelling power of vampires, if legends and superstitions are to be believed.

All stories that, while he enjoys reading and watching films about them, he never truly believed in, rather considering them simply ancient (ir)rational explanations for anything happening ever turned fodder for horror media. Then again what’s considered a supernatural creature is right in front of him in the flesh, looking for all intents and purposes like he wished he was anywhere but there, or at least that they were talking about anything else but this. And that supernatural being happens to be his neighbor from upstairs and crush for the past few months.

“ _ Holy shit _ .”

It’s unclear who’s more disconcerted: Wooyoung after finding out vampires really exist and that Mingi is one of them, or Mingi in front of Wooyoung’s anti-climatic reaction--especially considering the other fainted not long ago from seeing only a fraction of the full look.

(That one was sudden, though, he’ll give him that.)

While Mingi reverts to his human form, he studies Wooyoung’s espression, fully expecting him to call their friendship quits and beat a hasty retreat before going back to ignore each other’s existence, if he’s lucky. Instead, the vampire’s unbeating heart soars with relief and hope, as well as some underlying embarrassment, under Wooyung’s rapt scrutiny. Once he’s done, Mingi very originally and eloquently mutters, “Well?"

Wooyoung takes his time taking a long calming breath, eyes closed and fingers interlaced in front of him, before staring determinedly at the vampire.

“If you were trying to get rid of me, you failed miserably.”

Mingi blinks in response to Wooyoung’s challenging grin. Maybe it’s cheating, but he nonetheless decides to gauge the human’s real feelings by fine tuning his heightened senses to Wooyoung’s body: adrenaline is doing its darnest to make his heart escape his ribcage, but at least the faint scent of fear that has been linger in the air since they started this conversation has mostly dissipated by now, tentatively starting to be replaced by what Mingi has recognized as attraction pretty much since their first meeting.

With a bashful yet satisfied grin of his own, Mingi leans back in his chair and cards a hand through his hair. A peculiar skip in Wooyoung’s heartbeat catches the vampire’s attention, making him look at the human through hooded eyes and with his plump lips pulled in a teasing grin. Wooyoung gulps.

Mingi stands up. “I think it’s better for you to go to sleep. We can talk about our...uh...situation tomorrow. Or like, later,” he rectifies after glancing at the clock.

Wooyoung stands up too. “I don’t think I’ll sleep easily. Not after tonight’s discovery,” he admits, playing off his nervousness and expectations with a giggle. Mingi’s lips stretch in a tight-lipped but endeared smile.

“Shall we get more comfortable, then?” he suggests with a pointed nod towards the couch. “Do you want something to drink?”

Wooyoung is a bit taken aback. Is there really something for him to consume in a vampire’s kitchen? He remembers the messy retrieval of some sugar from a few weeks prior.

“Do you have cola?”

Mingi wordlessly fetches a bottle from his fridge and pours two glasses, putting everything on the coffee table. They sit down. He can feel Wooyoung’s eyes following his every move, much to his amusement: daggers of curiosity and mild disappointment at discovering it really is a soft drink are washed away by a wave of puzzlement and relief for being spared seeing Mingi drink blood for a while longer.

Drinks downed, they face each other, bumping knees from how close they’re sitting.

“Where do you want to start from?”

**Author's Note:**

> Comeback is approaching, yassss.
> 
> I only ever use it to like or retweet stuff but you can find me on twitter @stupidqpid_ (don't forget the underscore at the end :P)


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